[The bottles have labels both beautiful and inscrutable. The art is magnificent, if miniature; the lettering in Roman characters though there is something subtly strange about them, something that isn't a mere choice of font or embellishment.

The writing seems to crawl a little beneath the eye, defying strict translation through blood magic.]

Are stories only a matter of leisure? [He was not long out of the egg when the Queen of Lights passed from the world, but he remembers the touch of her Throne-gift. Art and stories were not a matter of leisure then; they were the fabric of the very world.

A little of that has remained with him all his life and into death.] Only to be indulged when one is bored? It would be a very poor world, I am thinking, if that were so.